Capitol

It was just the matter of God that made the whole church seem pointless. And Stipock, tired and discouraged and despairing that he could ever change anything for the better, went to his computer and put it in the encyclopedia mode. History, he punched. Religion, he typed in. Capitol, he typed, and finally called up information on the Church of the Undying Voice.

He was surprised to find that his name was still listed on the permanent membership list-- which amounted to billions of names and short biographies since the church had been formed back on Earth. At first he was startled that anyone would have gone to go much trouble to assemble information about church members-- then realized that these were simply the standard biographies the census kept up-to-date in the master library, and the list of members of the church had simply called them out of the master census lists.

It was not names he was searching for anyway, and at last, searching through various' files, he finally found Statements of the Prophet Amblick. He pushed the computer ahead to the end of the file. And there was the last statement of the Undying Voice.

The Voice had known. The Voice was the voice of an Abolisher.

"Those who borrow from the future must repay," Amblick had said, and it was true.

In the vague words Garol realized the Voice (no, no, not the Voice, Amblick in his dying words) had predicted a revolution, one that came not because anyone had remembered to believe in the Voice but because the tigers rage in the forest-- those regarded as less than human will discover they have power, and will use it to destroy those who oppressed them. And the end of somec would also be the end of the Empire-- the starships would cease to travel between the stars.

The accuracy of the prophecy was easy enough to explain: The broad trends of the future were easy enough for a wise man to see even two centuries ago-- and Amblick had been a wise man.

What most disturbed Garol was the last part of the prophecy. "Only one of you shall live to see the end," the old man had said. "And that one shall not know whether his God won or lost the final battle."

Who is the last one? I was the youngest one there-- will I therefore live to see the end?

And then he laughed at himself. The fact that he was youngest hardly mattered. What mattered was that he was on very high somec levels-- one up for twelve down, now-- and he would certainly outlive any of the others. For curiosity, he sca

All? He realized with alarm that his parents had gone on somec when he got the privilege, and would inevitably have kept the same somec level he kept. They wouldn't be sixty subjective years old yet-- surely they, too, were alive.

But their biographies could not be wrong.

He read them. His parents hadn't died on Capitol. A century ago, they had joined a colony ship together and had voluntarily quit the use of somec. They had given up immortality, and when Stipock's new planet analyzers were just going into use, they had gone out into space to settle a new planet.

Garol knew there was only one reason they would have quit somec. Except for those caught in a crime, no one on high somec levels ever went to the colonies-- only the misfits and the despairing nonsleepers ever volunteered to give up the hope of somec forever.

Garol's parents had changed their minds. They had believed again. They had given up somec and all the sins of Capitol, and had gone to a place where none of those sins would be possible.

They had gone more than a century ago, and so the computer listed them as dead, though in fact they might now still be in space on the way to a very distant assignment. When they landed, though, they would live out their normal lives in hard work and perhaps frequent danger. They would die hundreds of years before their colony qualified for somec.

Garol was indeed the last of the Church of the Undying Voice left on Capitol. And the prophecy spoke to him.

Garol Stipock could not sleep. The memories of childhood were relentless: they kept pressing him awake, making him restless and uneasy, alternately too hot and too cold. The impulse was irresistible.

He arose from his bed. He took a towel and covered his head, bowed and knelt and then began to speak to God. He spoke the words he had learned to speak in childhood, and because he was tired he overcame the feeling that this was preposterous, that he was a scientist, that he knew better. God had been speaking directly to him in Amblick's voice; and now Garol wanted the Voice to tell him what to do.

"It doesn't mean anything," he kept saying. "I can't accomplish anything. What can I do?"

And because he was tired he was not surprised when the Voice spoke to him. He knew the voice he was hearing was Amblick's; but he felt, nonetheless, that behind the voice he knew was the Voice he did not know, and it spoke to him with fire, shouting in his mind.

"Everything you have done is worthless," said the Voice.

Stipock withered in despair.

"I have given up talking to men and trying to persuade them. They were too wise. They will not listen to me."

But I will listen, Stipock cried out in his confusion.

"You least of all," said the Voice. "God is silent and so men believe that he is dead, but it is not true. The Undying Voice no longer speaks, but only because the Unsleeping Sword is unsheathed. If men had repented I would have spared them; but they chose to eat the fruit of the tree of life, not knowing that every taste of that fruit brings death so much closer. The end is near. The end is soon. But nothing you can do will hasten or postpone the end by one hour or one day."

Stipock felt the words as blows, and the pain of the Voice's fury made him weep, for mankind that had lost all hope of mercy, for himself who had lost all hope of meaning.

"Then why should I go on living?" he asked.

"Because your death," said the Voice, "would accomplish even less than your life."

And because Stipock was unable to accept utter despair, he shouted defiantly, "Who are you to judge what's meaningful and what isn't? Men refused to listen to you, and now you want to destroy them! A God who can only be worshipped by the ignorant and the weak has to keep men ignorant and weak in order to keep ruling them!"

There was silence, and Stipock reeled under the impact of it. I'm insane, he thought. I've become as mad as Amblick was, crying out prophecies at the point of his death in a vain hunt for some purpose in life.

And just as he had persuaded himself that the voice was a hallucination, it came again. This time it spoke, not with the fury of Amblick shouting prophecies, but with his mother's voice, a gentle voice when he mas small.

"Garol," said the Voice that loved him, "Garol, I only point the way for men to be happy. Is it my fault that whenever they gain more light and knowledge they use it to destroy themselves?"

"No," he answered.

"Garol, my son, my child, my little boy, trust me. It is in my hands. Trust me. Trust me." And Garol climbed into bed, and with trust me ringing in his head, he slept.

He awoke in the morning and remembered the experience of the night before, and laughed at himself for a fool. The Church of the Undying Voice program was still on the computer. He erased it, with a twinge of grief for his parents, who had reverted to religion and chosen certain death in the colonies.

Yet he could understand how it had happened. Even last night, as he had hallucinated the Voice, he had known it was all in his head. But hallucinations can be very convincing-- more convincing than reality. No wonder his parents were fooled. The religion of childhood never really lets go. Garol Stipock, for all his wisdom and understanding and science and self-possession, was still the little boy who had heard too many sermons and believed too many lies.